


Push, push

by susurrant



Series: Roads [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dean Has Powers, M/M, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Slow Build, Unrelated Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:10:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susurrant/pseuds/susurrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>John sticks a loaded Ruger MKII in Dean’s hand and points at an empty beer bottle propped on a tree stump maybe 50 feet away.</em>
</p><p>  <em>"Hit the target."</em></p><p>  <em>"Seriously? Six days of lectures on gun safety and when it comes to actually firing a weapon that's all you got?"</em></p><p>Pre-series AU where Dean is not related to John or Sam. Dean goes through John’s version of basic training. John isn’t the only one keeping secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

* * *

  

 _April 2003_ ****

  
Dean doesn't touch a loaded gun for nearly a week. For six days he cleans, disassembles and reassembles a half dozen different kinds of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. John makes him do it blindfolded until he can rattle off the model, gauge, range and a host of other crap by the feel of the grip alone.  
  
"Exactly how often am I going to be walking into a hunt blindfolded?"  
  
"Monsters come out at night."

"Not all of 'em, though?"

"Not all, but most,” John says. “Train bloody, fight clean. You prepare for the worst and then pray it never actually gets that bad."  
  
Dean goes back to cleaning. He's got blisters on his hands, calluses forming on the sides of his fingers, like the ones he used to get in school when he had to write bullshit essays in detention.

He sits in a kitchen chair; cleans and reloads one-handed, which he suspects is John's idea of amusing because it's awkward as hell with the shotgun clenched between his knees and his other hand tucked behind his back. John watches from across the table, a map of the lower 49 spread out under a pile of notes. Dean complains, but only a little and only ever under his breath. He won't complain too loud, because John’s patience has limits and Dean doesn’t want to test them - not yet.

He almost doesn't believe it when John takes him out back to the makeshift shooting range for the first time.  
  
"Hit the target," is all the advice he gets.

John sticks a loaded Ruger MKII in Dean’s hands and points at an empty beer bottle propped on a tree stump maybe 50 feet away.  
  
"Seriously? Six days of lectures on gun safety and when it comes to actually firing a weapon that's all you got?"  
  
"You’re still working on the basics."  
  
Soon enough, the gun is as familiar as his own hands. It isn’t about hitting the target - not yet, not to John -  it’s about his stance and grip and bracing for the recoil. John sits on the steps of the back porch with his feet kicked up on a spare tire in the grass, with newspapers, books, and thick manila envelopes stacked at his side and a notebook sprawled across his lap. He looks up every few rounds to check on Dean, reminding him to square his shoulders or fix his stance.  
  
Dean's hands feel like they've molded to the grips, and eventually his shoulders stop aching at night from holding his arms out in front of him for what feels like hours every day.  
  
The first time he fires a sawed-off it knocks him on his ass. He can see John trying not to laugh, and Dean is relieved and a little freaked out because it's the closest John's ever been to looking like maybe he might actually have a sense of humor.Dean tries to ignore the red hot flush he feels creeping up his neck. He hauls himself up, squares his shoulders, plants his feet and tries again. This time he stumbles back at the recoil, but manages to stay on his feet.

John sets his beer down on the porch railing and gives the smallest nod of approval. "It'll get easier once you weigh more than a buck forty."

Dean bites down on his lip, hard, because it’s none of John’s business what he weighs and it’s not exactly fun being reminded all the time that he’s on the scrawny side. John doesn't exactly harass him about food, but for the first time in a long time Dean has three meals a day, every day. It's simple stuff. Pasta, chili, one-pot meals; neither one of them is much of a cook. Actually, Dean is convinced that boiling pasta and heating canned soup is about the extent of their combined culinary skills.

Every once in awhile John brings back some of those heat-and-serve meals from the grocery store forty minutes down the road when he goes on a supply run - a rotisserie chicken or meat lasagna they reheat and scrape out of the cheap aluminum foil pans.  
  
Dean shovels it down, even after the novelty of having regular meals wears off. He picks out the tomatoes and mushrooms when he thinks he can get away with it. John never actually says anything about it, but when he notices he gets this look on his face that says, _what are you, five?_ And then Dean remembers how much he wants John to stop treating him like a wayward toddler and a little more like a man, maybe.

Dean swallows the last forkful of previously-rejected vegetables with a giant grin on his face that doesn't seem to do much to convince John of anything.

They go out on runs through the woods every day, breath steaming in morning air. The first morning Dean thinks he's going to die; his lungs burn and his legs feel like rubber. John - asshole that he is and like twenty-something years older - doesn't even look winded.  
  
Dean doesn't think it should be possible, but the run on day two is actually worse. His legs are still sore from the first day, and this time he knows exactly how far he has to go before he's done and just how much it's going to suck. Dean trips over roots and ends up getting his feet soaked through to the skin when he misses a step and ends up ankle deep in a tiny stream. The path up here isn't well-kept - actually, Dean isn't sure it really counts as a path at all - maybe a game trail or something, but then again Dean knows fuck-all about hunting.

When the cabin finally comes back in sight he almost collapses in relief.  
  
John gives him two aspirin that night. "You did okay today."  
  
"That's good. Because it feels like someone put my legs through a meat grinder, but as long as you think that's okay, then we're alright." He resists the urge to flip John off. Barely.  
  
"Take the pills."  
  
"I'd rather have some of that," Dean nods to the bottle on the floor by the leg of the couch.  
  
"How old are you?"  
  
"Twenty-three?" It's worth a shot.  
  
"No."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"I'm not in the habit of giving rewards to liars. Especially not bad ones."

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
When Dean can finally match John's pace in the morning run, he starts letting Dean go on his own. It's a rare hour alone - the cabin has two rooms and a bathroom, it's not like there's much in the way of privacy. The only noise is the pounding of his sneakers on the dirt path, and the sound of his own heavy breathing. It's early enough that it's still cold, the sky clouded over and the ground damp from the chill of the night before. He rubs his arms and picks up speed to warm up.  
  
Fifteen minutes later his shirt is sticking to his back with sweat and he's hit his stride. He dodges around the low branches and roots breaking through the soil, familiar with them by now. He can still feel the cold on his arms and face, but the rest of him is warm enough that it doesn’t bother him.  
  
He isn't used to the quiet of the woods, even after two weeks it still creeps him out a little. He's used to traffic, the bustle of truck loading docks and all-night convenience stores with their buzzing fluorescent lights and people. Driving, arguing, fighting, fucking - _people_. Since he's been here he hasn't seen a single person other than John, and Will, the checkout kid at the grocery store that’s miles away down the road.  
  
Dean wonders sometimes if John is really one of those crazy backwoods survivalists, the ones with underground bunkers and a lifetime supply of canned goods. Most of the time John seems pretty stable, at least compared to some people Dean's met. Of course a lot of the people Dean's met probably aren't the best barometer of overall sanity.  
  
John hasn't said anything about government conspiracies, but he also hasn't let Dean see any of what's in those notebooks and news clippings of his. Either John just really likes scrapbooking, or he's tracking some hunt that’s way above Dean's pay grade.

It doesn't stop him from wondering about it. He knows there's gotta be some issues buried in there. No average-Joe spends this much time alone in the backwoods and carries around this many weapons without some serious baggage. Dean's seen the pictures in John's wallet, the ones tucked in the back, behind the credit cards and IDs in three different names.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
John doesn't even let him walk off the adrenaline rush from the run when Dean gets back to the cabin this time. He hands over a loaded revolver and points at the five bottles lined up on a bench across the field.

Dean's heart is still pumping loud enough to hear it, and his hands shake when he raises his arms. His first shot goes wide, and so does the second. The next three hit true. Dean lowers the gun and reaches for the ammo to reload, but John swats his hand away.  
  
"That's enough for now, walk it off," John says.  
  
He checks the chamber and hands the gun back to John, stretches his arms over his head as he takes a slow lap around the clearing, working out the kinks in his legs. He keeps his eyes on the ground in front of him, pretends not to notice the way John's eyes are tracking his every step.  
  
Dean shakes out his arms and hands, irritated with himself. All week he's been hitting five-for-five, three is just pathetic. He knows what John would say, that he let the adrenaline mess with him. He guesses that was probably the point.  
  
He loops back around to the target and sets up three more bottles next to the two left standing from the first round and then heads back to where John is standing. He loads the gun with steady hands and hits all five.  
  
John comes up behind him and takes the gun before Dean has even lowered his arms. Dean resists the temptation to lean back into the touch.  
  
"Tomorrow, do it like that the first time."  
  
Dean rubs his thumb over the callous on the first joint of his pointer finger.  

"Yessir."

 

 

* * *

 

  
Dean is used to warmer weather, at least in May.  
  
By afternoon most days it warms up to sixty-or-so, but the mornings stay cold no matter how hard he runs.

Ten minutes in, right about at the same place he went into the drink that second day, it hits him that he's awake early in the morning, cold and running himself ragged for no freaking reason other than John told him to. Which is a good enough reason, really, though Dean can't explain why.  
  
He’s sure someday all this endurance training might come in handy, for now it feels like he's training up to be a marathon runner for no particular reason other than John’s silent nod of approval at the end of the day.  
  
Today he stops when he gets to the stream. It's small here - small enough that he can run right over it if he times his strides just right, but it sounds like it gets louder and larger farther downstream. There's not actually much to do back at the cabin other than target practice and watching the two channels that their crappy bunny-eared TV gets. Staying in one place this long is starting to get under his skin, like there’s a hook in his stomach pulling him on.

He gives in to it just for a little bit; walks along the muddy bank with his sneakers squelching. He's not going to go far, just far enough to maybe remind himself that he _could_ leave, if he really wanted to.

  
Every once in a while there's a rustle in the undergrowth, a rabbit racing from one cover to the next or a squirrel scrabbling up a tree. He'd thought the woods were quiet when he'd first come here, but that was because he’d been listening for all the wrong things.  
  
The stream winds downhill, picking up with a few others until it’s too wide to jump across. Dean pulls his arms inside his t-shirt and tucks his hands in his armpits. Now that he's not moving around as much the cold has set in again.  
  
The trees eventually thin out, and the ground rises, and Dean finds himself on an outcropping of bare rock with the stream a hundred or so feet below him. He sits down and stretches his legs out in front of him. It's a pretty great view and Dean thinks if he doesn't stop walking now he might not stop at all.  
  
It’s strange out here. At first he'd thought it was just him being kind of a freak, needing to get back on the road again. Move on to the next town, and the next and the next. But telling himself that isn't working anymore. For four weeks he's been sleeping on the couch at the cabin, running every morning and learning to shoot every weapon John hands him. It's a pretty good setup, compared to some places he’s stayed in the past.

Still, he doesn't know why he's here. John is the kind of guy that doesn't seem to need help with anything, ever. Dean knows he asked for this - training, hunting. Except they aren’t actually hunting, are they? And Dean kind of doubts John is keeping him around for his sparkling company.

He can come up with some other reasons, maybe, but other than a couple of intense looks John hasn't given a single damn clue that's what he's interested in. Why he’s keeping Dean around. Dean could deal with that, hell, he pretty much expects it from people by now. A small part of him is almost disappointed that John hasn’t made some clumsy move, half drunk in the dark one night.

But he hasn’t, not yet, and it leaves Dean wondering.  
Pretty soon his ass is going numb from sitting and he's got pins and needles in his legs that are going to make the rest of the run a royal bitch if he doesn't get moving. He climbs to his feet and double-times it back to the cabin.  
  
When he gets back, John doesn't ask where he's been and he doesn't offer. He shoots off five rounds and hits all five targets and heads back inside for a shower. The water gets surprisingly hot in the cabin's shower, though the tank is small and it doesn't last long. Dean stands under the spray and lets the water ease away the ache in his legs, scrubs the cheap bar soap over his body and doesn't think about foggy memories of John doing it for him just a few weeks ago when he was sick.  
  
That's how he thinks about the Walrider now; being sick.

The memories from that week are like fever dreams, all too hot or too cold and indistinct. The things he can remember clearly are the ones he'd really rather forget, the sharp bite of fear, the feeling of being chased, surrounded by something he can't see and John's hands gripped tight on his arms, his voice washing over Dean.  
  
The water starts to cool and Dean shuts it off before it can get any colder.  
  
John is at the kitchen table when Dean comes out, the ever-present journal open in front of him and a huge, ancient looking book propped open in one hand.  
  
"What's that?" he asks.  
  
"A book."  
  
Dean bites down on a response. Being treated like some idiot kid is getting old.

For once, John seems to notice his irritation. "You can look at it all you want when I'm done."

  
"...Thanks."

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
Dean’s in the woods again, taking a break from the morning run when a branch snaps behind him and he stops dead.

"Hello?"  
  
He wouldn't put it past John to come out after him, especially since he's been gone a while. Actually he's kind of been relying on that in case the woods mess with his sense of direction and he gets himself lost. No one answers, Dean figures it was kind of stupid to assume it was a person instead of a deer or something.

Down this far, the stream is nearly 20 feet across and deep enough that he can't see the bottom. Along the edges, craggy rock sticks through the patches of dirt, what ground he can see down there is uneven. Something is moving in the trees.

Not moving. Hiding.  
  
"Hey," he calls out, and the kid slips back behind the tree. "You can come out, it's okay."  
  
A little head with dark hair pokes out.  
  
"You're pretty far from town, aren't you?" Dean says.  
  
"So 're you."  
  
"Yeah well, I live out here."

"So do I."

"Oh yeah, where?"

"I'm not s’posed to talk to strangers." The kid looks at him sharply, like he’s disappointed Dean didn’t already know that.

"Okay well, I'm Dean. I’m not that strange, promise."

The kid scuffs one sneaker in the dirt and he chews on his bottom lip. He says something that’s barely above a whisper. Dean leans in to hear.

"I'm Mason," the kid repeats.

"Hi Mason."

The kid eyes him for a bit, sizing him up the way kids do when they meet someone new. They don’t have the finesse yet to cover it with polite conversation. Dean can appreciate that, it’s more honest.

Mason seems to come to a decision finally, nodding to himself.

“See you around, Dean,” he says and then waves, bolting off through the trees before Dean can wave back.

The next day Dean takes the same detour on his morning run. He’s standing on the river bank, stretching out a shoulder muscle that’s still sore from yesterday’s target practice.

“I know you’re out there,” he calls out on a hunch.

Mason peeks out from behind a tree, snickering at being caught out. He sticks his tongue out and disappears back into the woods, the pom-pom on his hat bouncing along behind him.

When Dean gets back to the cabin, John is shut up in the bedroom speaking to someone on the phone in a low voice. It’s too quiet to make out what he’s saying, not that Dean doesn’t try his best to hear. He gives up and spends the afternoon paging through the journal, drinking in the unfamiliar words and names, breath catching in his throat as a new world unfolds before him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dean spends his nights stretched out on the floor in the main room, flipping through the stations on an old stereo. When the weather's clear he can get the good stations, real music, not crappy pop music or NPR or whatever local shit some nut is broadcasting from his garage.

He digs out old cassette tapes from the back of the cupboards, behind bookshelves, painstakingly rewinds the tape on the ones that have come loose or tangled, tosses the ones that are too messed up to salvage. He's careful with the ones he saves, thinks of miles and hours on the road with nothing but static and John’s silence to listen to and records one artist at a time.

Some of them have cases, most of them don't. Case or not, each one gets a masking-tape label.

He stops measuring what's left in John's flask. Partly because it's pointless - he knows John has a stash somewhere and just keeps refilling it, but also because John shitfaced is pretty much the same as John dead-sober, except a little more morose, maybe. He stares a little more too, watching Dean with bloodshot eyes.

Dean keeps his distance when John gets like that, because John is an okay guy but Dean's not an idiot. He knows what liquor can do to people.

But John just stays on the couch, running his fingers over the pages of the journal. When he passes out on the couch - not often but it happens sometimes, Dean steals the bed. Sprawls out face down in it because he can, and because after a month here the bed smells like John, whiskey and spice and the faintest touch of gun smoke just under the surface. He doesn’t think about how it makes him feel warm in a way that has nothing to do with the blankets.

Otherwise, life is pretty boring at the cabin. John drinks too much, scrawls over and rips up his notes, every once in a while he looks up and tells Dean to stop recording that shit on the tapes.

John is an old school boy; he doesn't approve of Queen. His loss.

Dean waits until John stumbles off to bed one night and records as much of Bohemian Rhapsody as he can fit onto the tail end of every tape he can find.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mason isn’t there every day. Some days Dean only catches a flash of red through the trees as the kid runs around the woods, playing god knows what. Some days he peers at Dean as he stretches out the kinks in his back, peppering him with questions about where he came from and what he’s doing.

Dean doesn’t really have answers for most of the kid’s questions, but he manages to gloss over most of the weirder stuff.

Dean never stays long by the river, even in late-May it’s still too damn cold out to hang around for long in just a t-shirt and sweats. Still, he can’t seem to stop himself from going out there every day, his legs taking him downstream along the river like they’re on autopilot.  

There’s a knot that’s been growing in his stomach ever since he got here, one he’s been trying his best to ignore. And all the time spent out alone in the woods isn’t making it go away like he’d hoped.

He thinks he must be spending too much time looking at John’s journal. Just because he knows now about all kinds of weird crap that could be out there, doesn’t mean it’s happening right here, right now. But the part of him that never could manage to back down from a schoolyard dare won’t shut up. Pushes him forward.

_If there’s no way it could be true, then why are you afraid to prove it, huh?_

And that’s where he comes up short. Because all he really has is a feeling, less than a hunch.  John would look at him like he was nuts if he even mentioned it.  He pulls on a long sleeve shirt that morning, giving up on stoicism in favor of not freezing his ass off. He tries to clear his head as he runs, but ends up stopping by the river again anyway.

“Hey,” says Mason, already waiting when Dean gets there.

Dean lets his gut take over, crouches down and looks at the kid closely.

"Hey," he says and pulls a face to make the kid laugh. He pauses for a beat. "How long have you been out here?"

Mason shrugs. He’s pale, but he doesn't look blue or anything like Dean would expect. The knot in Dean’s stomach gives a little lurch.

"It's pretty cold out, you should probably go back home."

Mason looks over his shoulder and chews his lip some more. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"I got lost."

 _Yeah, that’s one word for it_. Dean’s stomach twists again. "And then what happened?"

"It got dark. I tried to sleep, but I woke up when I heard you."

Dean thinks a minute. John hasn't really talked about this part much, the part where you're in the middle of woods with no salt or matches, and hell, not even any bones to burn - and even if you had all of that, the hunt is a tiny little kid who didn't deserve this.

"Is your house by the river?"

Mason nods.

"Is the river bigger or smaller by your house?"

"Bigger. Way bigger."

"Alright then, let’s get you home."

He stands up, reaches a hand down for Mason to hold and has to lock his elbow to stop from recoiling when the kid's icy hand folds into his. They walk. He doesn't want to go too quickly, he can't risk scaring the kid off. Dean watches him out of the corner of his eye, looking for any sign of recognition. Mason looks around, he doesn't seem so unsure anymore now that Dean's walking with him, which is something. On the other hand, he doesn't look like he sees anything familiar, either.

Dean's not sure how long they keep walking. The evergreens give way to some other kind of tree, ones with lighter bark and new, pale green leaves. There's a small clearing up on the right, an overgrown dirt path winds off into the trees, and when they get closer Dean can see a small house at the very back of the clearing, nestled in between the trees.

The roof is caved in on one side, and most of the little red tiles are missing. The wood is rotted through on the porch railings. No one lives here, or at least Dean hopes no one lives here. Mason's eyes are locked on his feet, he doesn't look up until Dean stops walking. But then his eyes go wide.

" _Papa!_ "

Mason runs forward; it looks like his feet don't even touch the ground. The kid has to reach up with both hands to turn the knob on the front door and Dean is struck dumb when the door creaks open. Mason hesitates for a second on the doorstep, standing there with one hand still on the knob, looking tiny, almost swallowed up by the ruins of the house.

Mason steps forward and disappears inside. The door swings shut behind him.

Dean finally finds his legs and starts moving. He takes the stairs carefully, avoiding the crumbling patches covered in moss and sticking to the edges where the wood’s a little less rotten. He expects the door to be heavy, or sealed shut with some freaky magic crap, but it swings open easily.

The house is empty. The inside is no better than the outside, all bare rotted wood and broken down. There's a moth-eaten couch in the middle of the room, facing a TV set that looks like it hasn't worked in at least a decade. There's no sign of the kid, and no sign of _Papa_ either, which is fine by Dean. What do you even say to a father when you’ve just showed up with the ghost of his tiny dead kid? Would John know?

The floor creaks under his feet, and even with the door open and the windows cracked and broken, it feels warm and musty inside.

Dean shrugs out of his flannel, it's the first time today he can remember not feeling cold down to his bones.

There are pictures on the mantel, the ink faded and blurred. He scrubs his hand over the glass of the largest one until his fingers come away blackened, and he can just make out the image. It's a family. Mom and Dad, two kids. The older one is perched on a bike, one arm looped around the shoulders of the younger one.

Perfect little American family.

He doesn't need to look any closer to know the little kid was Mason.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The way back to the cabin feels longer than the way out. Dean takes his time with it, he doesn't feel any particular need to be anywhere. He rubs the feeling back into his right hand, the one that's still stiff with cold.

He'd left that morning before breakfast, same as every morning, and he thinks it must be past noon. He should be hungry by now, but he can't really feel anything but empty. He thinks if this were some kind of after school special then he'd probably feel good about helping the kid, but the truth is he doesn't think it makes any kind of difference. Mason is still just as dead, and Dean doesn't much believe in the white-light, better-place-now crap. Except now that he's seen it for himself, sort of, and he doesn't know what the hell that means.

John never talks about the philosophy of it all, and even if he seemed like the kind of guy to do that, Dean has no idea how to even start that conversation.

He's almost made it back to the path when he hears John calling.

"Dean? Dean!"

Dean whips his head up and sees John standing at the edge of an outcrop, a hunting rifle in one hand and a pack over his shoulder. Dean waves back to show he heard. He takes the hill slowly, his legs are sore and his head is killing him now.

John looks him over critically. "What happened?"

"I went for a walk."

It's not that he means to lie, exactly, he just doesn't quite feel up to telling the truth. He's not sure if John would be proud or pissed at him for walking around the woods with a ghost. Now that he thinks about it, pissed is probably the answer. But the lie is already out there, hanging between them and it’s too late to take it back. The look in John's eyes doesn't bode well.

"You were supposed to be going for a run."

"So I'll run it twice tomorrow."

"Not the point. Where were you?"

"Nowhere," Dean shrugs. John lifts an eyebrow at him and he feels a little ridiculous. "I walked downstream a bit. Why does it matter?"

"Your nose is bleeding."

Dean wipes the back of his hand across his face and stares when it comes away stained dark red. "Uh."

Dean can see John's jaw clenching, imagines he can hear the teeth grinding too. He still can't figure out exactly what the fuck is going on, maybe John is pissed that he didn't follow orders, but if it was just that then Dean'd be stuck scrubbing the bathroom with his toothbrush already, not standing here trying to clean his face up with his bare hands.

John turns and starts walking back up towards the trail. "Come on."

Dean trails behind, trying to scrub the drying blood off on his sleeves. They walk back to the house in silence.

John drops the bag just inside the door, unloads the rifle and props it up against the couch. When he finally turns to Dean, he's still got that look on his face.

Dean shrugs it off, John can be pissed all he wants. "I'm gonna go shower - "

John takes a quick two steps forward, grabs him by the collar of his shirt and spins him around, pushes him until he's crowded up against the wall. Dean tenses, then tries to force himself to loosen up, expecting a hit. It's supposed to hurt less if you're not clenched up, not that Dean's ever been able to prove it one way or the other. John's eyebrows dip and something flashes across his expression for a split second, then it's gone.

"You _do not_ wander the fuck off without telling me."

He makes it sound like Dean is three and got distracted by something shiny in the supermarket. "I didn't _wander off_ , I was just - "

"Just not doing what you were supposed to?"

"Because it's the end of the world if I don't go on a goddamn run every day? What the fuck..." Dean tries to shake him off. "You tell me I've gotta be in shape, okay fine. I've been running everyday for a fucking month. I can run, okay. What's next?"

"Nothing is next until you learn to follow basic fucking orders! In the middle of a hunt I'm not gonna have time go nine rounds with you."

"Newsflash - we're not on a hunt! We're in the middle of the woods." Dean doesn't think about Mason, about what he was and where he is now. John is still standing pretty close, and Dean isn't entirely convinced he doesn't have freaky mind reading powers made stronger by prolonged eye contact. It shouldn't be possible, but, sometimes Dean can't help wondering. And avoiding direct eye contact, just in case.

John takes a breath and backs off a step, his hand still twisted in Dean's shirt front. "I need to know I can count on you in a hunt."

And fuck it, Dean grits his teeth together and tips his chin up to meet John’s eyes dead on. "Six and a half days.”

"What?"

" _Six and a half days_. And maybe I don't remember a lot of it, but that thing is fucking dead and I'm pretty damn sure I already proved myself. And if you want more than that, then fuck you," he spits out.He finally manages to shove John's hand away and slides out from between John and the wall.

"I'm going to get cleaned up," he says over his shoulder and heads off to the bathroom.

The next day he sticks to the path, fires his rounds with shaky hands he has to clench to keep still and holds his breath while John watches, waiting for judgement. John watches the bottles explode, watches Dean check the cylinder and doesn't say a word.

He spends the next two days in an orbit around John, keeping his distance but never too far away. John doesn't yell, or hit him, or anything else that Dean is expecting. On day three John drives into town and doesn't come back until after dark.

The only reason Dean knows he hasn't left for good is because he leaves the journal and the rest of his shit behind. Dean flips through the journal, trying to memorize the pages of chickenscratch and rough sketches.

If John decides they’re done - that Dean isn't worth the effort, this might be the only training he gets before he's back on his own again.

But John comes back that night, nods his thanks when he sees the half pot of canned chili Dean left out for him, keeping warm on the stove. He eats and goes to bed without saying a word.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Sparring comes next," John says one day, out of the blue.

Dean figures it's as close as he'll get to praise for finally mastering the sawed-off. John has a habit of not bothering to dwell on accomplishments.

But then days pass and he doesn't mention it again. Dean isn't exactly looking forward to it, he's a decent fighter but that's mostly because he fights dirty, even with that he knows he's going to get his ass kicked. John's got a couple inches and at least thirty pounds on him. Dean knows it will suck; he fully expects to go to bed bruised and aching every night.

He still wants to learn. John’s an ex-Marine and Dean figures there’s no better way to make sure nobody tries to fuck with you than to learn from the best.

Dean spends half of every day with loaded guns, but John won't let him near the knives until he knows how to handle them. When John isn't looking, he runs his fingers over the shaped leather handles and imagines how awesome it would have been to have had one of those strapped to his ankle during some of his rougher nights, back before he started riding with John.

"So, when do we start hunting down Casper?"

John grunts. He's on the couch, journal open in his lap and a bottle of whiskey down by his left boot. He's been on the phone most of the day, yelling at someone and trying to cajole someone else. Dean had caught bits and pieces, but nowhere near enough to get the full picture. The name Ellen had come up a couple of times, and John had hung up on someone named Bobby. Twice.

Half the bottle is already gone. Dean hasn't actually seen John well and truly smashed, not since that very first night. He's been watching for it since then, and he knows he probably only catches him at it half the time - John is too sly to be caught easily and Dean is pretty sure John knows he's been watching.

The TV is on with sound turned down. A grunt is apparently all the answer he's going to get.

"Do we do that? Hunt down the friendly ones?" Dean pauses, thinks of Mason. " _Are_ there friendly ghosts?"

John blinks slowly and doesn't look up. "No. Just ones who aren't angry yet."

"Oh. So that's what happens - that's it? We die and we wander around pissed off until some hunter comes along to finish the job?"

"Yep."

That's grim. Dean's not sure he buys it; John looks morose, and when he's got that expression on his face he has a bad habit of bending the truth in favor of his own melodramatic bullshit. Dean probably shouldn't be pushing this right now, but he’s getting tired of waiting around, wasting his days training for a fight that’s never going to come.

"So… shouldn't we be out there taking care of shit instead of hiding out in the middle of nowhere?"

John closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. One hand slips down to pick up the bottle, which he unscrews and lifts up to take a healthy swig before opening his eyes again.

"No."

"No?"

"We need to work on your conversation skills."

"We need to work on your _communication_ skills. You’re saying we shouldn't be out there, hunting things, saving people?" Okay it sounds a little hokey when he says it like that, but still. He's getting pretty sick of just sitting around doing nothing. "Instead of hiding out here, living like the unabomber and watching you marinate your liver?"

"Go to bed."

Dean snorts. "Seriously?"

"You can have the room." John jerks his head back towards the bedroom.

Dean gives up. There’s no talking to John when he’s in this kind of mood, anyway. He collapses onto the bed fully dressed, but he can't sleep. When John comes in a while later, Dean keeps his eyes closed and doesn't move. The room is silent for what feels like a full minute, then he hears the door creak closed - not all the way, just enough to let in a weak sliver of light.

Even after John leaves, Dean can feel an itch on the back of his neck, like John is still watching. It takes a long time for him to fall asleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They leave the next day.

"Why? Not that I'm not glad, but - "

"The more you talk, the fewer rest stops you get," John says.

Dean shuts up. John might be an inhuman freak who can drive six hours straight without a break, but Dean needs to actually stand up, stretch out his legs and take a piss in an actual bathroom every once in a while. Dean shoves his cassette tapes in a box under the passenger seat and fiddles with the radio until John smacks his hand away and turns it to some boring AM station with traffic-and-weather-together.

They stop for the night at some hole-in-the-wall motel, eat drive-thru burgers on their beds with the TV on in the background. John wipes his hands on his jeans and heads into the bathroom.

John's journal is stuffed in his jacket pocket, small and cracking apart at the seams, stuffed full of bits of paper and napkins with god knows what written on them that threaten to fall out as soon as Dean opens it. He opens it up to a page he hasn’t read yet.

John had gone through a lot of basics, in an offhand way. It had been surprisingly unstructured, nothing at all like the physical conditioning or target practice - expectations to meet every day, shit to memorize and parrot back over dinner, or whenever John got the urge to test him.

But the actual hunting stuff had come out in a mess of off-hand comments and stories on those rare nights when John’d had a little too much whiskey and was in a talkative mood.

John had dropped a lighter in his hand one night - not a crappy Bic either, a nice one.

"Keep it on you," he’d said.

Dean had turned it over in his hand. It had a solid metal casing with a tree etched on one side and some kind of symbol on the other.

"Thanks but I don't smoke," he’d said and tried to hand it back.

"Fire kills most things. If you're up against something you've never seen before and you're stuck, it's worth a shot."

Dean had held out the lighter for another few seconds, but John hadn’t taken it back.

Stuff like that puts a lump in his throat; a compulsive need to settle the score. It's a stupid, small thing, but he already knows he won't let it go. There's that nagging fear that the second he stops keeping track, John will start.

Dean had shoved the lighter in his pocket without another word.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
John has his sleeves rolled up just far enough for Dean to see the edges of some ink on his forearm.

"Hands up, feet apart. Keep your elbows in close and your chin down."

Dean mirrors John's stance and feels a little bit like an idiot. This isn't how fights happen, not from what he's seen. Fights are chaos; they boil up and over in the space of seconds, no one has time to take a stance or get their hands up. You just react. And if you react too slow then you lose.

John tells him just the opposite.

"You wait for your chance. You’re up against something stronger and faster than you - and most things we hunt will be both, you buy time until you can find a way to get the upper hand. Use any advantage you can get. And while you wait, you move. Moving targets are harder to hit."

John steps to the right; Dean steps too. John watches him, eyes his feet, his arms. He nods approval, just a tiny dip of his head. Dean tries to keep his eyes focused on John's fists. He drops one arm, just a little, a fraction of an inch. Dean goes for it; steps in on John's left side and tries to land a punch to his side. John sidesteps, grabs him by the scruff of his neck and pulls him forward. Dean catches himself just before he goes face-first into the dirt. He whips around, finds John standing there like nothing.

"Don't pull your fist back like that. You're telegraphing your punches."

The next two hours go by, just like that. _Don't do this, do this. Not like that, hands up, fix your legs._ Dean's shoulders are burning and his legs are sore from keeping his knees bent.

John flips him to the ground for the umpteenth time. Dean kicks out, twists his hips and tries to throw his weight to the side, but John's too heavy to move. He lets himself go limp. He can feel the sweat trickling down his spine, his forehead, stinging his eyes. John grabs his shoulder and gives him a shake.

"You'll get better," John says. It's almost a compliment, coming from him.

Dean presses his face into the ground and tries to get his breathing under control. John's got one arm wrapped around under his neck, not tight enough to choke but Dean can't move much without cutting off his air. John seems to notice that he's still pushing him down and backs off a bit.

Dean twists like a snake, wraps one leg around John's waist and flips them over. His success only lasts three seconds, but it's a pretty great three seconds. John spins him around and pins him down again, face up this time, with his arm twisted and locked in John's grip.

Dean smacks the ground twice with his other hand and John lets up.

John stands and gives Dean a hand up. He claps Dean on the back, gives him a gentle shove back towards the motel.

John goes in for the first shower. Dean can feel the grit from the packed dirt ground on his arms, on his back where his shirt rucked up while they were sparring. He slumps down on the edge of his bed, loose-limbed and sore, palms his cock through his jeans with one eye on the bathroom door. John takes five minute showers, Marine-like efficiency or some shit like that. It's not enough time, he should just wait until his turn in the bathroom. He rubs the heel of his hand down against his cock and shuts his eyes for a second.

John hasn't done a damn thing except look, for all the nights that Dean's stayed awake waiting for the other man's breathing to even out, every time Dean's blood rushed in his ears, terrified he'd finally gone too far; talked too much, asked too many questions, complained just a little too loud. But John does _look_ , and that's all it takes to keep Dean balanced on this razor’s edge, trying to figure out which way to fall, if there's any way he can have both.

This - whatever it is, it’s the least fucked up thing he's ever had. He wants it to stay that way.

The bathroom door swings open and Dean sits up, snatches his hand away from his crotch.

He brushes by John on the way to the bathroom, eyes on the floor and sweaty palms pressed flat against his sides.

 

 

* * *

 

  
It takes three months for John to stop pulling the distributor cap from the car at night. It doesn’t make sense to Dean; he's not being forced to stay. Kind of the opposite, really. John gives him these sidelong looks every time they stop in a town with more than two streets and a fill-up joint. Like he’s trying to give Dean an out.  
  
Dean pretends not to notice. John never says anything out loud and that's fine by him.  
  
Eventually Dean realizes it isn’t him taking off that John is worried about. It’s him taking off _with the car_ that John worries about. By the time John stops pulling the cap, Dean figures it's because John knows he can track Dean's ass down if he tries to take off. Whether or not John actually would track him down, Dean figures, is based more on if he steals anything important on his way out or if his disappearance might have something to do with their case.  
  
Of course, by then Dean also knows that John usually hides the cap in the air vents of the motel bathrooms.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_June 2003_

Dean flicks his lighter on and off, on and off. It’s bullshit, waiting in the car like a little kid while John goes out alone to burn the bones.

Dean’s already been through the cemetery, he’d spent at least an hour wandering around trying to find the damn grave. John had let him help dig for bit too, but the second they’d hit the casket he’d been ordered back to the car, and that rankled like nothing else.

That had been ten minutes ago. It wasn’t that long, but how long did it take to light a freaking match? They’d already done the hard part finding the stiff and digging him up. Dean tries not to think about what happens if John doesn’t come back, which means he can’t stop thinking about it for more than two minutes at a time.

Finally John comes lumbering back to the car, hunched over and tired. The drive back to the motel is silent.

It isn't until they get back to the room and John peels off his jacket with stiff movements that Dean sees the blood soaking through the fabric of John’s shirt.

" _Holy sh-_ "

"Get the bag," John juts his chin at the med kit in the corner and heads into the bathroom.

Dean picks up the bag, clinking and rattling as the contents all knock together inside. He hesitates for the barest second, John left the door open to the bathroom but the way he'd been walking broadcasted "stay the fuck away" loud and clear.

"Dean!"

Dean jumps at the sound, is in the bathroom and dumping the bag on the floor before he actually has time to think about moving. John is straddled over the closed toilet lid, facing the puke-yellow tile wall, craning his neck over his shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of the damage in the mirror over the sink opposite. The back of his undershirt is torn, raked diagonally from shoulder almost down to the hip and blood-soaked. Dean doesn't realize he's been talking until John interrupts his steady litany of _shit shit shit_.

"Cut the shirt. I need you to stitch it up for me."

For what seems like a full minute the words completely fail to process. John wants him to stitch up the - _duh_ , not the shirt. He wants Dean to cut the shirt off so he can stitch up the _wound_. Dean's mind screeches to a halt.

"You're kidding right?"

"Do I look like I'm fucking kidding?" John's head whips around and Dean flinches back. He takes a long breath, and Dean can tell that every second sitting upright is costing him. He meets Dean's eyes, voice steady but sharp as steel. "It's not deep, just long. It looks worse than it is."

"I don't - I don't really think that's possible. This much blood…" _Isn't supposed to come out of a person._

"Dean. Focus." John's words are clipped, though Dean is almost certain it's from pain more than anger. There's still definitely some anger there too.

Dean grabs the knife from his ankle sheath and shears the shirt straight up the back, peels the fabric from skin and ignores the way the blood is tacky and still warm under his fingers. Right. Clean the wound.

It's not like he's stitched people up on a regular basis or, you know, _ever_. But he can guess the basics, like why there's a mostly-full bottle of high-proof vodka shoved in their med kit.

John's got his hands braced against the tank of the toilet, knuckles white, fingers curled over the edges; already braced for it when Dean tips the bottle over the cut. John's back goes rigid the second the alcohol hits his skin, Dean knows it must hurt like hell but all he hears is a grunt from John.

Half the bottle ends up on the floor, tinted pink with blood and the smell would be enough to make him dizzy, if he weren't already from all the blood and thought of what John expects him to do. Dean never thought of himself as a particularly squeamish person, but living with John has forced him to redefine his use of the word _disturbing_.

He takes a quick swig from the bottle to calm his nerves and sets it down on the floor.

"There's a curved needle and some floss in the kit," John says without turning around.

Dean doesn't answer. John was right about one thing, with some of the blood washed away Dean can tell it isn't as bad as it had looked at first. That doesn't mean it looks good, exactly, but at least he isn't worried about John bleeding out in the next few minutes. That also means that they've got plenty of time to do something reasonable, like get John to an actual doctor instead of Dean patching him up with dental floss in a motel bathroom.

"I flunked home ec, just so you know."

John reaches around without looking and grabs the vodka off the floor. "You actually _went_ to home ec?"

"Well, no. I'm guessing that's why I didn't pass."

John snorts and Dean thinks it might have actually been a laugh, almost. John takes a long pull from the bottle and lets it clunk back down to the floor.

Dean's got the needle in one hand and a strand of floss in the other and for the life of him he can't make the two go together the way they should. Apparently he's taking too long because John pushes himself up straight and cranes his neck over his shoulder.

"Dean, this isn't rocket science. Just fucking do it."

His first reaction it is to snap back about John sounding like freaking Nike ad, but John is still watching him over his shoulder, and man, Dean's never seen him this pale or this pissed off. Threading the needle takes three tries, but he does it, and douses everything in vodka one last time for good measure.

The wound is jagged and uneven, and his stitches aren't much better. John barely flinches at each stick of the needle, but that doesn't stop Dean from being ginger about it. It feels like hours pass, his fingers cramping around their tight grip on the needle, his other hand tacky with dried blood and pinching the skin together. He heaves a sigh of relief when cuts the thread after the last stitch. He tapes down some gauze and nudges John's shoulder.

"You still alive?"

John shakes off his hand and stands up, stumbles past Dean and out of the bathroom without a word.

"Yeah, you're welcome," Dean calls out after him.

Dean takes one last swig from the bottle and almost gags. His stomach is queasy and his hands are crusted with half-dried blood, so are his jeans, the floor, and pretty much everything else in the bathroom. He shucks off his jeans and scrubs his hands until they're mostly clean. He'll deal with the rest of it later.

John is passed out on his stomach on the other bed.

Dean is exhausted, but he doesn't think he can sleep. He blinks down at John long enough to make sure he's still breathing, then pulls up a chair. There's a little kid part of him that'd been convinced John was too damn good to ever get hurt bad, even if the rest of him was smart enough to know better.

He sits down heavily, watching the steady rise and fall of John’s back. He wonders who comes around to salt and burn the hunters that get torn apart too badly to be patched up with dental floss and liquor.

John wakes up late the next morning, eyes just barely cracked open and moving carefully and slow. He digs his wallet out of his jeans and slaps a couple bills in Dean’s hand.

“Coffee,” is all he says.

“And a nice fresh tetanus shot to go with it, right?  Seriously, we need to get that looked at.”

John doesn’t bother answering him. They leave town that afternoon. There’s a poltergeist in some guy’s house about sixty miles west.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_July 2003_

"So, what're we doing here?" Dean asks.

It’s another boring street in a boring town, but at least the weather’s nice. Nothing sucks more than a stakeout in shitty weather. Dean doesn’t feel the same tickle at the back of his neck he usually gets when they’re close to a hunt, but maybe they’re not at the scene of the crime yet. Could just be a potential witness or something, he figures.

That is until a lanky kid turns a corner and comes down the block and John sucks in a breath like he’s having a coronary and it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.

"He's your son," Dean says in a whisper, wondering.

"Yeah, he is."

Dean stops cold. _They’re gone,_ John had said one night, the only explanation he’d offered. He always played a little fast and loose with the truth when it suited him.  "I thought -"

"He wanted normal. He grew up like this,” John nods down towards the journal sitting open in Dean’s lap. Sam’s name is in there, in the earlier pages at least. At some point it’d stopped popping up, and Dean had figured that must’ve been when... _They’re gone_. John’s eyes are still tracking the kid as he disappears around a corner,  “he grew up in the life and he wanted out."

"And you're not gonna go talk to him?"

John shakes his head. "He wouldn't want me to."

"Wouldn't want you to? Wouldn't want to know you're alive? He knows what you do, knows how dangerous it is. Bullshit, 'he wouldn't want you to,’” Dean spits out.

"Dean-"

"You're _family_. You're supposed to watch out for each other."

"I tried, goddammit! I spent my life running because I thought something was after him. I just wanted him safe. And I was wrong, alright? A year alone and he's fine without me. So I fucked up, dragged him all over the goddamn country growing up and none of it was even necessary. Is that what you want to hear?"

It isn’t. They sit in silence for nearly another hour, until it’s pretty clear Sam isn’t coming back out again, and then John guns the engine and drives a circuitous route back to a motel they’d passed on the way into town.

Dean stops when they get to the motel room. He’s never seen John this off before and it scares him a little. And as much as he doesn’t want to be here right now, he’s almost afraid of what John might do if he leaves him alone for too long.

"I'm sorry I'm not…” Dean waves a hand back out towards the car, “ - you know. Him."

"This has nothing to do with you."

"Yeah," he says.

Because something has been hammering in the back of his head ever since Sam turned around that corner and he thinks maybe this is what it’s like to have a panic attack. He’d known a couple of kids that used to get them, back when he was still stuck in the system, and after too.

He grabs some clothes out of his bag and lurches into the bathroom, locking the door behind him and bracing himself against it. He’s a goddamn idiot and he’s fucked everything up, and he knew it the second he saw Sam.

Because he never really could figure out why John had taken him in but he’d had ideas and he’d been so, so wrong. Because John had a kid and lost him, not because he died but because Sam had wanted the cookie cutter normal life and John couldn’t handle that.

And John had taken Dean in, fed him, trained him, told him to eat his goddamn vegetables and Dean was so screwed in the head he’d thought it was something else. He’d been so fucking sure of it.

And instead of playing his role as the stand-in son, he’d made an idiot of himself with stupid jokes and clumsy teasing, climbing into the man’s bed at night and just waiting, expecting something that would never come. He’d told himself John was an old school, salt of the earth kind of guy. That John wasn’t making a move because he was fighting himself over it, and Dean had thought, one day it would happen. But John wasn’t fighting at all; he just didn’t want Dean. Not the way Dean wanted him.

Dean bites down hard on his lip, letting the pain ground him, stop his heart from racing so fast.

Dean turns on the water in the shower, lets it run so John thinks he’s washing up to buy himself a little more time alone. He counts up to three hundred and shuts the tap off, splashes some water on his face and hair so he at least looks wet. He changes into a pair of sweats with fumbling hands and leaves his t-shirt on, stands in the bathroom with one hand on the doorknob and waits until he can face going back out into the room.

John is sitting on the end of the closer of the two beds, his flask beside him and a defeated look on his face.

"None of this is your fault," John says.

"Yeah, I get it.” _I do now, I really do I swear._ “Family thing."

John stumbles over to his own bed as Dean flips on the TV to fill the silence. They both pretend to watch, although Dean couldn’t have said what was on. He could do this; he could play the part and enjoy it while it lasted. If it lasted.

"How old were you, when you lost them?" Johns asks suddenly.

Dean stops, at first he’s not sure what John is asking. The thing is, he doesn’t _remember_ losing them, not the same way John remembers his wife. Hard to describe losing something when you don’t remember ever having it in the first place.

"Couple of months," he says.

"Sammy was six months old."

"At least he had you." Dean doesn’t quite manage to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

But neither does John. "No, he didn't."

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

When the razor nicks him for the second time, Dean swears under his breath. A tiny bead of blood wells up, on the edge of his jaw just to the left of his chin. He tears off another piece of tissue and taps it in place over the cut, watches as the blood snakes out along the fibers of the tissue until the whole piece is bright red.

 _Perfect_ , he thinks wryly.

He rinses the razor off in the water, then tilts his head back to try again. It’s a stupid thing, anyway, it’s not like he’s got a ton of stubble but what he’s got so far is growing in patchy, barely noticeable unless you’re up close. It won’t matter to anyone but Dean, but Dean is guy that has to spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week standing shoulder to shoulder with John fucking Winchester, feeling inadequate.

Dean’d rather have no facial hair at all and still look like a little kid than have this sort of scraggly-whatever on his face. It bugs him more than he’s willing to admit, which is why he’d waited until John was out on a breakfast run before attempting to shave it off.

The bathroom door is cracked open just enough so he can hear when John comes back into the motel room, the paper bags of takeout crinkling as he sets them down on the table, the smell of steaming hot coffee drifting into the room after him.

John’s back earlier than Dean expected, must have gone for drive-through instead of the diner down the street.

He nicks himself again and swears, dropping the razor into the sink. He’d been distracted, thinking about breakfast.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, be out in a minute.”

But the door is cracked open anyway, and a second later John is there, nudging it open just enough to see, his eyebrows raised in question.

“Throw that thing out.”

“Huh?”

“Throw it out,” John nods towards the Bic in the sink, “unless you want to continue slicing the hell out of your face.”

And with that John disappears from the doorway, and Dean can hear him rustling around in his bag. When he comes back in he shoulders the door open the rest of the way, setting down a small zippered leather bag on the counter and holding something that looks like a short but wide leather belt in one hand.

John picks the Bic out of the sink and chucks it in the trash, cutting off Dean’s protests with a sidelong look. He glances over Dean’s face, at the tiny patches of red tissue stuck over the nicks and cuts, and the soap lather slowly drying out on the other half.

“Rinse off, then sit,” John says, gesturing towards the other side of the counter.

Dean splashes water on his face, ignoring the way it stings on the cuts. Once he’s dried off he hops up on the counter, watching as John opens up the bag and starts setting stuff out around the sink.

He clips one end of the leather-belt thing to the towel rod that’s just below chest height and leaves it hanging there. The next thing he takes out is a straight razor - it’s got a rich dark wood handle and the blade flashes in the light when John flips it open.

“ _This_ is a razor,” John says and flicks a disparaging look at the Bic in the trash.

Dean rolls his eyes. John spends his days drinking cheap beer and cheaper whiskey, surviving on crap food from roadside diners and gas stations, staying at motels with more health and safety violations than patrons, but leave it to John to be a snob about a freaking shaving razor.

“The one I had was plenty sharp, thanks.” Dean gestures to his face, at the cuts that have mercifully stopped bleeding by now.

John just shakes his head. “If the blade was sharp enough, you wouldn’t have to press into your skin to get a close shave. Those cheap ones go dull on the first swipe, you end up pressing harder than you need to and you end up catching the skin. If you take care of your blade, that doesn’t happen.”

John closes the blade and sets it down, then cranks on the hot water in the sink. First he fills up an old chipped coffee mug with water and drops a short brush inside, then passes a washcloth under the water, shuts off the tap and wrings it out.

“Hold that on your face.”

Dean does as he’s told, inhales the hot-damp air through the washcloth, smelling like bleach and too much starch.

John pours out the water from the mug and drops a little bar of soap inside. He takes the brush and swirls it around in the soap quickly until a thick lather starts to work its way up the sides of the mug, nearly covering the brush itself. The mug and brush get set aside as John picks up the razor again.

“First you want to make sure the blade is sharp.” John opens the razor and flips the belt-thing over, showing some kind of thick black material on the other side.

John holds the end of the belt-thing - the _strop_ , he explains - in one hand, runs the blade over the material with a well-practiced ease. After a few more quick passes he flips the strop back over to the other side and continues passing the blade up and down the leather.

“If you know your blade well enough, you can hear when it’s ready.” John does a few more passes and then nods. He gestures for Dean to pull the washcloth off his face, and Dean drops it in the sink.

John steps up between Dean’s legs, and Dean fights down the urge to sit up straighter at the closeness. John probably did this for Sam, back when Sam was some knock-kneed kid. Just because it sends a shiver up Dean’s spine doesn’t mean it’s anything more that a shaving lesson.

John gently tips Dean’s head to one side and back a little bit, the side that’s not cut up from the Bic, and brushes the lather on with quick, efficient strokes.

John stops, waits for Dean to meet his eyes. “Don’t move.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean says, eyeing the blade in John’s hand.

“Dean - ”

“I heard you, I’m not an idiot.”

John holds his gaze for another beat before looking away. He presses a couple fingers just below Dean’s temple and tugs the skin upwards, and Dean barely feels the blade pass over his skin. John flicks lather off the blade into the sink, out of the corner of his eye Dean can see little bits of stubble speckling the white soap. Not a lot, but some.

John is standing close enough that Dean can feel his breath against the side of his neck, his body heat against his chest through their shirts. John makes another pass with the blade, and when he leans away to flick the blade clean Dean takes the opportunity to swallow hard.

“When you’re shaving, you want to lead with the edge at about a 30-degree angle from the skin.” John’s voice is low, almost like he’s talking to himself.  He tips Dean’s head with gentle hands, fingers nudging under his chin, a hand cupped around his throat, thumb pressing in to make him turn his head. Dean tries and fails to keep his breathing steady.

“Pull the skin tight as you can, and follow the direction of the hair. Don’t ever move the blade parallel across the skin.”

When John stops for a minute to work up more lather in the little mug, Dean stretches out his jaw, feeling the skin of his cheeks pulled tight by the drying soap.

“You’re kind of ruining the mystery here, you know,” Dean says. “I used to think the permanent five-o’clock shadow was just your thing. But no, it’s because shaving is like an hour long ritual with you. No wonder you don’t do it more often.”

John looks unimpressed. “When I do something, I like to take the time to do it right.”

Dean tries his best to ignore the heat that settles in his groin at those words as John presses two fingers up under Dean’s chin, tipping his head all the way back, exposing his throat.  Dean swallows reflexively and John stops.

“You good?”

He doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods with as little movement as possible.

John shaves his upper neck and under his jaw with quick, careful strokes that tickle the sensitive skin. Dean closes his eyes and is thankful he’s seated far enough back on the counter that his crotch isn’t pressed up against John’s stomach, otherwise this would be ten times more awkward. A frantic part of his mind wonders if John can tell anyway, but he shuts that out. If John could tell, he wouldn’t be dragging it out like this. He’d step away and leave Dean finish up on his own. But he doesn’t.  

John takes his time, running his fingers over the just-shaven skin to check for missed spots, for cuts. There aren’t any. Dean can just barely feel each pass of the blade over his skin, even when John goes over the cuts from Dean’s first botched attempt.

When he’s finally done, John runs the washcloth under hot water again and wipes away the last bits of lather. He dries off the blade, and then rinses and dries out the mug, sticking the soap back in a plastic bag. He sets the razor in the mug, with the blade sticking up.

Dean watches John’s hands work - it’s a good excuse not to have to meet his eyes.

“Don’t ever put a blade away wet, or even damp,” John is saying. “I’ll let it air dry out a bit until we’re ready to leave.”

Dean reaches up, runs a hand over his cheek, down under his chin and back up the other side.

“Um, thanks.”

John glances up at him and Dean doesn’t look away fast enough to avoid his eyes.

“Yeah, because you needed a shave so badly.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, the soap came off cleaner than it went on.” There’s a hint of a grin in John’s eyes when he says it, and it tempers Dean’s annoyance but only a bit.

“Oh yeah, and like when you were my age you were sprouting a full beard.”

“When I was your age I wasn’t allowed to have a beard. Marine regs.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah ‘oh’.”

He’s seen the medals pinned inside the journal, like John needed to keep them but not where just anybody might see. He’s also seen some of the scars on John’s body, never been sure which ones were from hunting and which were from before. Never been stupid enough to ask.

“Sorry,” Dean says.

“Sorry that I wasn’t allowed to grow a beard?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah I do. It’s a stupid thing to apologize for, so don’t.”

Dean hesitates, because yeah they live in each other’s pockets, but there’s some things they just don’t bring up in conversation. Dean’s life pre-hunting has always been mostly off-limits, and so has John’s.

Curiosity wins out this time, because Dean’s never been able to keep his mouth shut when he should.

“What was it like?” he asks.

John meets his eyes for a solid minute, standing at the sink and wiping his hands off on a towel. His hip is just barely touching the outer curve of Dean’s knee, warm and solid.

“It was war. Hope you never have to find out.”

 

* * *

 

 

_July 2003_

Dean’s been trying with every fiber of his being to keep things under wraps ever since Palo Alto. The problem is, Dean _wants_.

It's not something he can put into words, at least not any more than just that one. He can't even really picture it, when he's got a few minutes alone and his hand wrapped around his dick. Scruff of beard against his neck, warm breath and the scrape of teeth; John's hands holding him steady.

John doesn't touch him, not really - not outside of sparring or giving each other a hand when they’re hunting. But he also hasn’t stopped looking, and it doesn't stop Dean from wanting.

But John lets him pick the motel each night, and lets him bitch about the food and the long hours in the car. John makes him a couple fake IDs and snorts when Dean lies about his height but lets it go. (It's not really lying, more like bending the truth a bit. He's still a growing boy, he thinks.) John bitches at Dean to _eat something green once in a while,_ and _no that does not mean skittles_.

And yeah - sometimes John's hands _are_ on his skin, stitching him up or checking for broken bones and cursing under his breath.

Dean wants more than his own hand on his dick and some half-formed thoughts. He wants to stand up and look at John and not feel like he's nineteen and a whore and a liar. John treats him like a kid; a person, at least, but a _kid_. Dean wants more, but he's afraid if John looks hard enough he might see something… less.

It’s the same look he’s gotten his whole life - teachers, social workers, other kids on the playground. Like they can all look at him and see the missing pieces, the twisted parts where he doesn’t stack up right next to everyone else and their white-picket fence lives.

There might have been a time when things were different, back when his parents were still alive. Back nineteen years ago, today.

They stop at a fill-up joint in the afternoon and he sneaks John's flask out of the car and downs as much as he can before his throat is burning too much to swallow without choking. He slips the flask back under the driver's seat while John's filling up the tank.

He regrets it almost immediately.

The smell of gas clings to the car, mixing with the taste of whiskey he can't get out of his mouth. His stomach rolls over when the car starts, he presses his head against the window and bites his lip. John is going to be fucking pissed when he notices. _When_ , not if.

By the time they stop for lunch Dean feels sick. He stumbles out of the car and mumbles something to John about going for a piss. The fresh air outside of the car helps a lot, but his head is all over the place. There's a guy having a smoke outside the bathroom, and all it takes is one look for Dean to know everything he needs to.

"Got a smoke?"

The guy looks him over and nods, offers up his pack.

Dean tips his head down against the wind and lets the guy light him up. The guy isn't John, not even close. He's a big guy but not huge, dark brown hair and some stubble on his jaw. His face is thin, he doesn't have John's jaw or the promise of laugh lines around the edges of his eyes.

But his dick is thick and dark, and already hard by the time Dean gets his mouth on it in the bathroom stall. Three months doesn't change a goddamn thing, turns out. Dick still tastes like dick, and when the guy grabs the back of his head to fuck his face Dean isn't even surprised. Like riding a bicycle. Dean snorts and almost gags.

And then John is busting in like the fucking gestapo, because John has some kind of radar that tells him exactly when Dean is doing something stupid. Dean has one arm looped around the toilet and the other braced against the metal stall and John is yelling; at him or at the guy, he can't tell. He can still taste the guy's cock on his tongue.

He looks up at John standing over him, eye level with his crotch and he has to get up before he does something really fucking stupid. He climbs to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall and he's barely standing before John is on him.

"What the fuck, Dean? _What the fuck?!_ "

Dean scrapes his tongue against his teeth and stares at the floor.

"What - you needed money?"

Dean thinks this might be the first time John has ever sounded surprised.

"I, yeah. I just wanted some cash."

John pulls the wallet out of the back of Dean's pants. There's cash in it, of course there is, because John makes sure he has some every time they pull a pool hustle. It gets Dean’s hackles up every time, but John just looks at him and says, "Don't spend it on anything stupid."

He says that, but he never actually asks what Dean does with it, which is the only reason Dean takes the cash. He thinks this is what it's like to have mom pack your lunch every morning, except shadier.

Dean still doesn't like spending it though, has been saving most of it up for just-in-case, which is why there's a nice healthy fold of bills in his wallet right now.

John is still talking - more like yelling.

"What? I wouldn't take you on a hunt today so you suck down the first sleazeball you find at a truck stop? Funny thing, you don't look like you were enjoying yourself all that much."

John grabs Dean’s crotch. Dean tries to stumble back, but the toilet digs into the back of his legs and there's nowhere else to go. _Not like this_ , he has no fucking clue how it's supposed to happen, but it's not supposed to be like this. Dean crumples back to the floor, head spinning from the alcohol.

"Gimme a day, I'll be fine," Dean keeps talking but he's not really paying attention to anything other than a spot on the floor about a foot to his left.

John starts talking, something about stranger-danger and Dean would laugh if he didn't feel so sick. Like he doesn't already fucking know how dangerous this shit is.

" - that guy was old enough to be your father," John says.

"So ‘re you." Dean shrugs, his head rolling back against the stall to look up. His mouth always gets him into trouble, one way or another.

"I'm not the one molesting you in a bathroom."

This time Dean can't hold back a snort of laughter. He thinks it might be hysteria bubbling up. Oh. Or possibly vomit. He bites his lips together.

John's jaw twitches, Dean thinks if he were sober right now he could probably focus hard enough to hear the man’s teeth grinding together.

"You know what I mean. Is that - did something happen?"

Like anything is that simple. "Yeah, foster daddy touched me in the bad place and that's why I'm fucked up."

John spreads his arms, lowers his voice. "You needed the company? Some comfort? _What?_ 'Cause I gotta say, there are better ways to go about it."

"You won't touch me." And now he's just being a snot, he knows it, but he still can't keep his fucking mouth shut. He wants and he _wants_ and he's never going to _get_ , because John thinks this is babysitting and right now Dean can't actually come up with a good reason why it isn’t.

" _That's_ what this is about?"

Dean looks up.

"Yeah, I just handle rejection really badly. Sorry ‘bout that."

John sighs. "One for one, you answer me, honestly and completely, and I'll answer any question you want."

"Honestly and completely? Tall order for felons and whores."

John’s jaw clenches again. "I think we can live up to it."

Dean leans sideways until his head thunks against the metal stall. He doesn’t even need to hear the question. He already has the answer.  

"July 24th, 1984. We lived just outside of Stillwater. Electrical short, is what they said. I don't remember any of it, but it was in the files they sent out to the schools. They'd give the foster parents these manila envelopes with all our info in 'em. Like a user's manual: how to deal with your new substitute kid."

"Your parents?"

"Died in the fire."

"I'm sorry." John's voice is rough. Dean's heard those words a lot over the years. This is the first time he thinks he might believe them.

"Shit happens," Dean says.

John's got that look on his face like the wheels are turning. "Dean, how old were you?"

Dean picks at a hole in the sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't know why that would even matter. "Six months."

John swears, and for the first time since he slammed into the stall he backs off a few inches. Dean looks up.

"What?"

John rubs a hand over his forehead and then looks at Dean, hard. Dean clamps his mouth shut, as much to stop himself from saying something stupid as anything else. There's a tiny, desperate part of him that hopes John somehow hasn't noticed the smell of liquor on his breath, like that would even make a difference at this point.

John reaches down and Dean flinches back; can't help it. John stops immediately, hand hovering just a few inches away from the side of Dean's head, and the look on his face makes Dean feel like would give pretty much anything to make it so he could act like a normal goddamn person and not a freak. John's hand settles slowly, cupped around the back of Dean's neck.

Dean closes his eyes. He doesn't even care what happens next he just wants it to be over - he's tired, and sick, and his head has started pounding.

John tugs him out of the stall. "Let's go."

The drive is silent. It only takes thirty minutes, but to Dean it feels like hours. He slouches in his seat, scraping his tongue against his teeth and chugging water to try to get the taste of cheap whiskey and sex out of his mouth. John had dropped a bottle of water in his lap when they'd gotten back to the car, with an order to drink until the bottle was empty. John doesn't say anything else about the alcohol, and Dean counts himself lucky for it.

When they get to the motel, John doesn't stop to take off his coat before he dumps a bunch of coffee packets into one filter and sets it brewing. John keeps glancing over at him with that same expression on his face. Dean can't figure out if it's suspicion or anger or what.

"Look, I'm sorry - "

"Dean, how much do you remember about the fire?"

He must be more drunk than he thought, either that or John's gone stupid. "I was a baby. I don't remember anything."

"Nothing from the report? No one ever told you any details? Come on, think."

"No. They were dead, what else did I need to know?"

John turns away and pulls out his phone. Dean doesn't know what to do. Any other night and he'd be unpacking his shit, taking a shower, going over the local papers, whatever. But John is acting weird and after today there's no telling if John even wants him around anymore.

It's been a good couple of months. Dean only wishes he knew why - John already knew some of how Dean got by before they hooked up, he doesn’t think it’s that. Although who the fuck knows, at this point. Dean stands by the door with his backpack still slung over one shoulder.

John comes over and nudges him, turns the phone so the mic is pointed away from his mouth. "Call for food."

Dean sits down on one of the beds and drops his bag by his feet. He rifles through the takeout menus on the nightstand, settles on pizza because it's easy and he knows John always orders the same pie. Dean is hanging up just as John thanks whoever he's talking to and hangs up as well.

The room is silent for a full minute while Dean watches John and John stares into space, miles away. John looks up and seems to decide something.

"Your mother was in the nursery with you," he says.

 _Christ_ , he's still going on about the fire. Dean knows the words should mean something - that once upon a time he had a normal, cookie cutter life with a mother and a real home. But to him, now, it's all just empty words. Whatever life he might have had burned down years ago and there wasn't any point thinking about it.

But John's not done talking. "Your father came home in the middle of it. He died trying to get you out." John's hands are curled into fists. Dean's mind races, trying to connect the dots. It's a sad story, sure, but he can't figure out why it would make John angry.

"Okay… but, why does any of this matter? It was years ago."

"Your mother didn't die from the fire. She was cut open."

That sends a shiver up Dean's spine. His hands go cold. "Why? How would you -"

John sits down heavily on the other bed. He pulls out his wallet, and a picture that’s tucked behind his driver's license. He rubs his thumb over the edges a few times before he passes it over to Dean. It's a picture of a pretty blond woman and a tiny baby with wispy brown hair. Dean has actually seen it before, not that John knows that.

"That’s Sam, and - " Dean realizes he doesn’t even know her name.

"Mary."

“Oh.”

"I've been tracking the thing that did it ever since."

Dean has seen John in action. He's seen the man take out three armed state troopers with only a few bruises to show for it. He can't imagine anything that would last very long once John Winchester decided he wanted it dead. Dean folds his hands together, trying to rub some warmth back into them and hide the shaking. He suddenly feels pretty damn sober.

"What kind of thing are we talking about?"

He's not sure he wants to hear the answer.

 

* * *

 

 

John doesn't mention what happened at the rest stop.

He doesn't ever mention his wife or his son after that night either, and Dean figures there are some things that are really best not to talk about anyway. What they do talk about is the thing, the _demon_. They almost never stop. And now Dean realizes what it is John spends his nights, his days - hell, every waking hour doing; pouring over maps and weather records from two decades ago, news clippings of house fires and witness statements.

Dean's family is in that pile somewhere, a picture of a ruined home and a short but kind statement from the neighbors about the nice young couple next door, and what a tragedy it was. He had glanced over it once, expecting to feel something, some piece of recognition or finality. But nothing comes.

It's one more tragedy in a file full of them. Just a piece of paper with some ink on it. He shoves it to the bottom of the pile and doesn't look at it again.

 

* * *

 

 

_February 2004_

Dean is standing in the dining room of the vic’s house, hands in the pockets of his borrowed suit, looking around at the spotless table and fresh flowers decorating the mantle. He whistles quietly to himself.

He can hear John talking to the family out in the living room, with a gentle tone that still takes him by surprise sometimes even though it really shouldn’t anymore, not now that John allows him to tag along on hunts most of the time. Dean slips into a corner of the room, out of sight from the doorway and pulls his homebrew-EMF detector out of his pocket.

“ _What is that, a walkman?” John had asked when he’d first seen it. Dean had been sprawled out on a motel bed with wires and screws scattered across one side of him and a half eaten pizza in an open box on the other._

_Dean had grinned back. “It used to be.”_

Now he dials down the volume and flicks it on, still half focused on the murmur of voices from the other room. The LED lights flare along the top, wavering around mid-range. Probably typical, for a suburban area with power lines and cell phone towers in every direction. He makes his way through the rest of the house, detector tucked down low in case he needs to put it away in a hurry.

The lights flash all the way up briefly as he comes up the stairs, then die back down and stay that way for the rest of the sweep. He huffs out a breath and starts to head back when he sees the detector go apeshit again, just as he reaches the top of the stairs. There’s a large window on the landing about halfway up, and the lights stay on and steady right there. He looks out the window, it’s an old New England home with high ceilings, but even so he’s only about a floor and a half up from ground level. Not normally enough of a fall to kill someone; not unless you landed in the worst possible way. Or you were pushed.

He heads downstairs, stopping in the front entryway and trying to look for all the world like he’s been standing here the whole time.

“Thank you again for your time,” John says and he leads the group out of the living room. Two young couples - the grown children and in-laws of the victim. Dean nods his condolences and follows John out the door.

“What’ve you got?” John asks before they’re even in the car.

“Something definitely went down on the landing.”

John looks back at the house. “By the window?”

“Yep.”

“Good to know, but that’s not what I was asking.”

“Huh?”

“What. Have. You. Got?”

“ _Jesus_ , okay.” Dean pulls a silver letter opener from the inside pocket of his coat. “It’s not like the dead dude is gonna need it now anyway.”

John holds out a hand and Dean passes it over.

“It looks like solid silver, which could come in handy. Just so you know,” Dean says.

Dean can almost see the war going on in John’s eyes, sheer practicality versus his occasionally obnoxious _aw shucks ma’am_ morality. It’s the reason Dean took something useful instead of - say, the very antique looking pocket watch he’d found laying out on the bureau in the master bedroom. Not that he’d been tempted, it was just, who the hell leaves expensive stuff like that just sitting out everywhere?

John holds the knife out in front of him for a minute, then hands it back. “Don’t do it again.”

The case turns out to be a simple salt and burn, they still catch those every once in a while even though most of their focus now is on tracking down the other fire kids. Dean appreciates the break. As much as he wants to know what happened to his family, wants to understand why and find the thing that did it, sometimes it’s nice to just go back to the simple stuff. Find a case, interview the vic and do some research, find the body and burn the bones.

Simple.

 

* * *

 

 

_August 2004_

Sometimes, Dean misses simple.

“You know, they say you are what you eat,” Dean says and spits blood on the concrete, shifts just enough to take some of the pressure off his shoulders from the way his arms are tied behind his back, lying on the floor.

“I’m just saying, you should probably stop eating balding old white dudes. It’s not a good look on you.”

It ignores him.

There’s another guy tied up in a chair sort of down near Dean’s feet, his eyes wide open and expressionless. Still alive, Dean thinks, but only just. The thing - _monster_ \- whatever it is, leans over the vegetable-guy in the chair and grins.

“Mmm, leftovers. I’ve always said it’s the best part of ordering delivery.”

And then Dean closes his eyes, because there are some nightmares he doesn’t need.

He was stupid for thinking this would work. Stupid for going into this without backup, without even a half-decent plan. But John hadn’t exactly been available and Dean hadn’t taken much time to put two and two together before he got to four. And in this case _four_ meant _do something right fucking now or else John’s going to get himself killed_.

So Dean had left the bar and punched a number into his phone that shouldn’t have connected. And he’d taken that itch - that feeling like a hook in his stomach that John thought was just freakish good instincts and Dean was beginning to think was something else entirely - and he’d clamped down on whatever it was and just _pulled_.

And somehow it had worked.

Barely a minute later a guy had stumbled into the parking lot; nondescript, another tired soul just looking to unwind after a long day at work. But the guy wasn’t just a guy, and he wasn’t just looking to unwind. He was looking for a snack of the soylent-green variety. Dean hadn’t noticed until a second too late to block the blow that sent him to his knees. After that there’d been darkness.

The crocotta was strong, and fast, and Dean hadn’t gone out tonight expecting a fight, just a chance to blow off some steam, since John had taken a phone call and then blown out of the motel room without a word to Dean.

Dean can make a guess what the call was, now. Now that it wouldn’t do him any good. The dearly departed were ringing up more calls than telemarketers in this town, and Dean was willing to bet good odds he knew who was on the other end of the phone call that’d had John bolting out the door a few hours ago.

There’s the soft sound of fabric rustling and then a crash as the back of the chair hits the floor by Dean’s feet.. Dean doesn’t need to look to know the guy in it is dead. He can only hope whatever soul was left in the guy was nice and filling enough to buy Dean some time before his own soul is up next on the menu.

The bonds around his wrists have a little give to them, but it’s not rope or chain, just some kind of fabric wrapped around and around. He hasn’t been able to scrounge up anything yet to saw away the bonds, so he’s stuck hoping he can maneuver around just enough to get a hand free. But for that to work, he’s gonna need time. As much time as he can possibly get. It doesn’t help knowing that every second he wastes on the floor is a second John might not have, wherever he is.

“What’d you do to him?”

“Him?” It asks, glancing down at the body on the floor and dabbing at the corners of its mouth with a napkin. “You’re not very bright, are you?”

“Not him, jackass. _John_. What did you tell him?”

It grins and pulls a cellphone out of a pocket.

“Don’t - !”

It holds up a finger to its lips, waiting for the line to ring. When it speaks, the voice isn’t anything Dean’s heard before.

“John - John can you hear me?” It sounds like a woman, scared and breathing hard. “I can’t - you have to finish it. He won’t let me leave, it’s so hot in here - please John. I need you.”

“Don’t listen to it!” Dean yells, a wild hope that John might hear him and snap out of it. But even as the words leave his mouth he knows it’s useless. He’s never met the woman - hell, she’d died before he was born, but he knows it’s her nonetheless. The only person dead or alive other than Sam that could convince John to do something recklessly, suicidally stupid.

Mary.

“Please,” it says in her stolen voice.  “I don’t know how much longer I - ”

“John, it’s not her - it’s not her I swear, _please listen to me!_ ”

The crocotta walks over to Dean and all he can do is turn his head away before the kick lands.

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up to John slapping at his face and cursing under his breath.

“Dammit Dean, c’mon!”

Dean blinks hard a couple times and then winces away from the light and the jackhammer that’s busy fucking up his skull. John doesn’t let him turn away though, gets a hand under his chin and pulls him back around to look straight up at John’s face.

Dean looks and tries not to blink, he knows what’s John’s looking for. Pupil response, photo… something. “Conc’shn?”

“No shit. You need a hospital?”

“Nn-”

John’s lips are pinched together and Dean can’t scrub together enough brain cells to figure out why. “Right. C’mon, we gotta go. Can you walk?”

John drags him up by one arm and Dean’s stomach makes a serious effort to leap out of his throat. Bile and stale beer comes up. Dean’s arm is wrapped over John’s shoulders, held tight, and Dean’s feet are tumbling down… somewhere. He thinks. He hopes he didn’t ralph all over John’s shoes or something. Or shit, his own. Squinting down at the floor, he thinks they’re in the clear.

“Wasn’ her,” he says. It seems important.

“I know. Stop talking.”

“ -‘m sorry.”

“ _Jesus_ , kid. Stop. Talking.”

Dean isn’t sure when they make it back to the motel. He doesn’t remember much of the rest of the night, either, just flashes of spitting bile into the sink and John handing him water, telling him to stop talking, _stop talking_ -

 _Dammit Dean please just stop_.

 

* * *

 

 

When Dean finally wakes up - when he’s actually really awake rather than fuzzy and dim with pain and painkillers, the first thing he sees is John asleep sitting up on the other bed, feet still on the floor and slumped over sideways against the headboard.

Dean’s boots are off, but he’s still in the same jeans and shirt that both feel tacky with sweat and grit. He wipes a hand over his face, feels dried blood and other unnamed grossness just under his nose and by the corners of his mouth.

He’s alive, which is pretty impressive, he thinks. John’s skills as a nursemaid may be limited to the bare minimum but apparently whatever he did, it was enough.

Dean peels off his clothes, careful of bruises and cuts he hasn’t yet discovered. He knows they’re there, his body aches all over, but thankfully his head no longer feels like it’s about to explode. It’s just a dull throbbing ache like the rest of him.

The shower isn’t warm enough to soothe away the pain, but it’s enough to wake him up and scrub himself clean and human again.

John is awake by the time he comes out - rumpled and bleary-eyed, but awake.

“How did you find it?” John asks without any preamble.

“I didn’t. It found me.”

It’s not a complete lie. John looks at him for a long moment as Dean shifts from foot to foot, towel wrapped around himself, wishing he’d thought ahead to bring a change of clothes in the bathroom with him.

“Hey, how’d you find _me_?”

“Tracked your phone.”

Dean nods. That wasn’t what he really wanted to ask, though. _How’d you know?_ He wants to ask. It sits on his tongue like gristle he can’t spit out. He swallows instead.  Both of them have things they’re not saying.

Choosing not to say.

Same as always.

 

* * *

 

 

_November 2005_

Dean wakes up with a grunt when he feels the warm blankets ripped away. John shakes his shoulder until Dean reaches around and smacks his hand away. "Dean, get up. Now."

"M'up, I'm awake," he mutters. "What, where's the fire?"

Dean looks around blearily and sees John hustling around the room, ripping the newspaper clippings off the walls and stuffing them in a worn manila envelope. "Up now, we're leaving. You've got five minutes."

"What happened?" he asks, but John is already out the door carrying two of their duffels.

 _Shit_. Dean rolls out of bed and pulls on his clothes from yesterday. Probably another hunt, he thinks, and tries to remember if it's close to the full moon. Ever since he found out werewolves were real he's been hankering for the chance to see one in the flesh. He's gotten used to random changes in direction, drifting along in John's wake the past three years and trusting John to set the course. He doesn't much care anyway, one crappy motel room the same as the next and two lane highways are the same the whole country over.

Still, Dean kind of hopes it’s a werewolf this time.

He knows it isn't the second he gets in the car. John's jaw is clenched tight and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel, there's no coffee and no paper bag of donuts sitting ready on the passenger seat, just the rumble of the engine and they're off.

After an hour of silence, he breaks. Usually wouldn't bother asking and just wait it out until John's ready to tell him, but John's mood is scary bad. He's usually pretty cool, almost distant, and Dean's gotten used to that. It's comfortable. But right now John is seething, eyes glaring holes in the blacktop ahead and forehead wrinkled in concentration.

"What happened?"

"Sammy."

"He okay?"

Dean's never actually met Sam, but they make a trip out to California every few months; swing by campus and spend a day or two parked a block away from his apartment, catching glimpses of the kid as he makes his way home from class.

They stay just long enough to a get a couple good looks at Sam but not long enough to draw any unwanted attention. But Dean cares, if only in a distant second-degree kind of way he hopes to hell the kid is okay. He knows he'll be the one picking up the pieces if Sam isn't.

"He's in the hospital. His girlfriend burned."

" _Fuck_."

John doesn’t respond.

They drive straight through, twenty-something hours running on beef jerky and only stopping for gas. Dean steals John’s cell phone without asking and starts calling every hospital in the Stanford area, impersonating reporters and close family members all desperate for information. When he’s through with contacts saved on John’s phone, he digs out the journal. John has an entire section dedicated to shit in Stanford, all in the same cryptic, messy writing it'd taken Dean a full year to learn how to decipher.

_SW, hos-robin ddn_

It's like trying to read a bunch of friggin' scrabble pieces. Dean rolls his shoulder to stretch out the crick in his neck and wedges the phone under his ear again to call Robin, who's either the deputy director of nursing or neurology, it's difficult to say. Whatever, he can fudge it. Four calls later and he doesn't have anything solid; patient confidentiality is a bitch sometimes.

He finally gets a hit when he manages to sweet talk a bored nurse into confirming they had a young guy brought in late last night with moderate burns on his hands and arms.

The clerk on the phone assures him the burns were treated and the patient is recovering well, but refuses to give out any more details.

"Sounds like he got out okay. I mean, nothing that won't heal," Dean says.

John grunts. Dean doesn't know what's going to happen when they get to Palo Alto, but it sure as shit isn't going to be pretty.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam is unconscious when they get to his room. His hands are bandaged up, lying on top of the covers; he looks pale and almost too tall for the bed. Dean hovers outside while John goes in.

Sam looks wiped out, but John - John looks wrecked. Dean doesn’t know what to do. He thinks maybe he should be in the room, because John is teetering on the edge and looks like he might start throwing shit around the hospital room at any moment and Dean guesses some of those beeping machines are probably kind of expensive.

On the other hand, it’s not his place. This is John and Sam; a family thing and it’s nothing Dean can touch.

He backs off instead, figures John probably won’t start trashing the room if Sam is right there, asleep and hurt. He goes in search of a vending machine instead, which turns into an hour long ambling walk around the hospital and then another twenty or so minutes hanging around the nurses’ station trying to chat up the staff. He’s mostly unsuccessful.

When he gets back to the room, John’s got a bag open on the chair and Sam’s bed pulled away from the wall.

“Help me lift this,” he says.

“Huh?”

“The mattress, Dean. Help me lift this side so I can pull the sheet underneath it.”

‘This’ turns out to be a spare flat sheet John must’ve pilfered from somewhere, covered in UV-painted protective sigils. Invisible to the naked eye but powerful all the same. When Dean walks over, he can see there are grease pencil markings all over the back and underside of the bedframe.

When they’re done with that John pops out the window screen, sketches out another line of sigils in grease pencil, pours a salt line and seals a strip of duct tape over it all.

“You think it’s coming back?”

“No.” John is doing god-knows-what to something inside the air vent now. “If I thought it was coming back for him, we’d be wheeling him out the back door right now.”

“Okay so this is all just...”

“Precautions. He’s going to be groggy for the next few days, and with his hands like that - I can’t leave him defenceless.”

“Right. We can take shifts, switch off. We won’t be leaving him defenceless.”

John doesn’t answer, and suddenly the flurry of activity and protective charms makes sense.

"Oh, you're kidding me."

"Dean - "

"No, you've gotta be fucking kidding me! He's hurt, and something is after him, and we're just gonna leave him here?"

"Whatever is after him, it doesn't want him dead or he'd be in the ground already. This thing is powerful, it could've killed Jess any way it wanted. But it replicated Mary's death _exactly_. It wants to pull him back in, it's pushing him to hunt. Same way it pushed me. If I stay here I’d be pulling him back into that life. Sam doesn’t need that. He doesn’t _want_ it.”

"You don't think maybe what he _needs_ is his Dad right now? What kind of father are you?"

"Because you know so fucking much about family. Shut up and get to the car, Dean. This isn't up for discussion."

Dean seethes. He opens his mouth to argue but John cuts him off.

"Not up for discussion," John repeats. "I'm going after this thing, and we’re not dragging Sam anywhere near it. Far as he’s concerned, we don’t even know what _it_ is. You're in or you're out, make a choice."

Dean rips his eyes away from John, from Sam still lying unconscious in bed. _Not his family, not his place._ John gets to call the shots here, and if Dean doesn’t like it he can get the hell out.

He digs his fingers into his palms, feels the sting of his fingernails pressing into the skin. John is his best hope of getting answers, and what John does to his relationship with his own son is none of Dean’s business.

Dean swallows, takes a breath. He meets John’s eyes and nods.

 

* * *

 

 

Chasing down the fire kids isn’t like any other hunt.

Sometimes they find nothing at all; normal kids leading normal lives without a blip on Dean’s spidey sense to suggest otherwise. Sometimes the kids are nuts - kids with violent pasts, shunted into institutions that can’t deal with them.

Some of the kids have powers. They have powers and visions they can’t explain and they’re holding on to normal life by their fingernails.

Dean ignores the twist in his belly, the itch at the back of his neck whenever he thinks about the fire kids, about their powers. It’s been years since he’s seen the man with the yellow eyes, in his dreams or awake. Maybe he’d just been forgotten.

Dean’s not naive enough to believe it though.

Stanford to Lafayette to Utah, the demon was visiting his children. One by one.

 

* * *

 

 

_October 2006_

John reaches around him to grab his shaving kit from the counter. It’s not exactly unusual, they’ve been sharing tiny rinky-dink motel bathrooms for the better part of three years now, they’ve spent enough time bumping shoulders to get used to it. Usually they give each other a little more space though.  John is right behind him, his knuckles brushing the back of Dean’s t-shirt as he messes around with something in his kit.

Dean makes room at the sink, steps over to side until his thigh is pressed up against the doorjamb. John grunts in response, steps forward but not away to his side, just enough to reach the sink and start lathering up his shaving brush.

Dean leans over to spit into the sink from the side, wipes his face with a starch-stiff motel towel and watches John deftly strop the straight razor and apply lather to his face and neck with the brush. He makes quick work of it, well-practised strokes clearing his skin of the lather almost as quick as it went on.  When he’s done, he rinses off and dries his face, rubs in just a small splash of aftershave. Then he glances up and catches Dean staring.

“You could use a shave too, you know,” John says. “You pull more cash in a hustle when you don’t have a five o’clock shadow.”

Dean gives himself a quick once-over in the mirror. He doesn’t really need a shave, but John’s been a prickly bastard lately about the weirdest shit, so instead of arguing he just nods.

John takes half a step back and gestures Dean over, closer in front of the sink. But instead of handing him the razor, or leaving him to just use his own, John gives his own blade a few more quick passes on the strop and lathers up his brush again.

“Uh.” Dean hesitates.

“Get some hot water on your face first.”

And Dean isn’t in the mood to argue, so he does. John lathers up Dean’s face with the same quick movements as he did his own, reaching around from behind. But when he picks up the blade he meets Dean’s eyes in the mirror and stops. John steps closer, the front of his body pressed up against Dean’s back. John reaches up with one hand in Dean’s hair and tips his head back and off to one side.

Three years of watching and wanting and Dean knows John’s routine probably better than anyone other than the man himself. John doesn’t start at the top of the cheek, the way he normally would. Instead John raises the blade to Dean’s neck, just under the hinge of his jaw. Dean fights the urge to swallow. He doesn’t really know what’s going on, what prompted this. John’s been stressed lately, snapping at him more and watching him with a strange look in his eyes that Dean can’t parse. But until now Dean’s never actually felt threatened.

Dean forces himself to stay still. He ignores the barest touch of the blade at his neck; John won’t hurt him. Not on purpose. He ignores the way John is pressed up all along his back, the way John is - _fuck_ \- the way John is hard behind him.

John’s face in the mirror is half-obscured by Dean’s own reflection, but he could almost swear John is grinning. A shiver starts at the base of his spine, his stomach flips over, and he clamps down on the feeling.

Finally John starts to move. He shaves Dean’s neck and face with slow strokes. The only sound in the bathroom is the soft _shhck_ of the blade passing over his skin and their combined breathing.

When John finishes, Dean stays stock still, watches him clean off the blade and brush and set them out to air dry. John walks out of the bathroom without a word, and Dean crumples over, elbows on the sink and head in his hands.

He swallows down bile and meets his own eyes in the mirror.  He’s fine.

Everything’s _fine_.

 

* * *

 

 

_November 2006_

The demon kills three more families.  John and Dean are in town for every one of them, close enough to hear the sirens of the fire trucks as they go screaming by, too late to help. Dean’s slept three hours in the past three days. John’s been out all day tracking down some other lead, leaving Dean with three hospitals’ worth of birth records to dig through, trying to come up with names and addresses faster than the demon can burn them down.

It hits Garden City, Topeka, and the third one just hours ago right here in Salvation - Rosie Holt and her parents.

Dean crosses their address off the list just as John comes back in.

"Finish that and get to bed. None of the offices are going to be open now anyway, and it sounds like tomorrow's gonna be a busy day."

"Yessir," Dean mutters without looking up.

"Dean - " John’s voice cracks on his name.

"Yeah? What's up, you okay?"

"I'm fine," John says. "Just tired of swapping out for the couch. It's hell on my back."

"I can take the couch from now on, I don't mind." Dean’s pretty sure he could sleep standing up at this point.

"Bed's big enough for two."

"Oh. Uh, yeah."

“C’mon.”

Dean climbs into the bed, ignores the way John’s hand rubs down his back, knocking against one of his bruises from their last hunt. He bites down on his lip until the ache subsides. He’s too exhausted to get wound up over John telling him to share the bed. He’ll worry about it tomorrow, or possibly never.

"You have to leave - _now_. It's the demon, Dean I can't -"

The words don’t process at first, only the tone of voice comes through the fog of almost-sleep. He hasn’t heard John sound like that since… since -

"Shh."

He must’ve dreamed it. Like those dreams where you think you’re falling. John’s hand is still stroking down his back, pushing up under his shirt.

Dean mumbles and turns onto his side. Of all the fucking days for John to decide to get over his issues, now isn’t the fucking time. John doesn’t get the memo, though, just keeps pawing along Dean’s back until he hits the bruise again.

Dean hisses and twists away, but John’s hand just follows along, slipping underneath his waistband and - " _Don't touch me._ Just - don’t, don’t touch me."

John’s arm yanks away.

When John speaks again, his voice is different. Rushed and breathless. The first words of an exorcism, only to switch back almost instantly. “Omnis immundus s- _sorry but I'm not done yet, Johnny-boy!_ "

Dean scrambles off the bed, heart pounding. This is real. This is happening.

“Omnis satanica - " The exorcism dies on Dean’s lips the second his bruised back hits the wall. He can’t move. Can barely breathe. Something is keeping him pinned there.

John is standing close enough now that Dean can feel warm breath ghosting along his jaw. Dean tips his head back, tries to ignore the prickle that runs along his skin at the feel of the thing standing so close. Of course he feels it _now_ , not half an hour ago when he had a bottle of holy water strapped to his ankle and a rocksalt-loaded shotgun within easy reach.

None of that would've been enough to kill it, but it might have been enough to buy him some time and space to cobble together a plan.

"Aw sweetheart," it whispers, "don't be like that. You're my favorite. Well, next to Sammy." It smiles.

“And there's no need to use such foul language. All I want to do is try a little experiment. Your initial results look very promising, young man. So let’s try that again." John’s hands are steady on his hips, steady the way they always are except right now they aren’t _John’s_ hands. Something else is pulling the strings, and his skin crawls at the way the solid warmth of them still somehow feels reassuring.

"You can talk Dean, say anything you like," it says.

It pulls Dean's sweatpants down slowly, staring straight into his eyes and daring him to object.

"Stop, please," he tries, but the demon shakes his head.

"No no no, are you asking me or telling me? Try again, this time with feeling."

Dean sucks in a sharp breath, John’s fingers are digging into his hips hard enough he knows it’ll leave bruises. It won’t be the first time John’s left fingerprints on his skin, but this is the first time Dean’s ever wanted to scour them away with steel wool.

He thinks about hands and mouths and bodies, money passing from hand to hand in alleyways and bathroom stalls, and too many years of living under the illusion that he had a choice. Years spent as a kid, shunted from one place to the next based on convenience and budget cuts and paperwork filled with buzzwords like _behavioral issues_ and _lack of respect for authority_.

Dean has a lack of respect for authority, alright. He doesn’t know what this thing is, the tickle on the back of his neck when weird shit is going down, the hook in his stomach, pulling him into trouble more often than not. Dean never learned to fight by the rules. He learned to fight with whatever he had at hand. So he takes that curling feeling in his stomach and he focuses on it, feeds it, lets it grow inside until it pushes up his throat and out.

" _Get off me._ "

The demon snaps back like its been burned. Then it smiles.

"Much better. I always said you were a quick study. Now, I'm going to give you some time to practice with that and I'll see you again," - it winks, "real soon."

John’s head falls back and black smoke tears out of his mouth, billowing up to the ceiling like a thunderstorm before shooting out the air vent. Dean doesn’t move - can’t. He’s not being held still anymore, but he’s frozen in place all the same. Dean’s eyes are locked on John as he sucks in air and stares down at his own trembling hands.

Eventually John looks up, they stare at each other for too long in silence, Dean fighting against the clamor of panic in his head until one question, just one, makes it clear through the din.

"How long?" he asks.

"Since Utah."

Dean swears. Utah was four weeks ago. Four weeks, and Dean can’t even begin to count the number of times John’s been out of his sight since then.

John looks away, still down on his knees. "Pull your pants back up."

"I didn't imagine that did I?"

"Try it."

"It said it wants me practicing, should I really -"

"Try it. Just this once, just so we know for sure."

And Dean can’t help it, hates himself for it - John’s voice is rough but dead calm and right now it’s the only thing he trusts, even though he knows he shouldn’t. Not now.

" _Come here_ ," he says and John jerks forward like a puppet on a string.

He feels lightheaded. This can’t be real. Instinct is one thing. Being some kind of supernatural trouble magnet is another, something he’d just figured came with the territory as a hunter.  This is something else entirely.

"Right so... that happened," Dean says, but John isn’t listening.

"We need to leave. It knows we're here, we need to leave. We've gotta find Sammy. It said it knows where he is, either it's watching him or it's got him. We have to find him."  John is talking a mile a minute, yanking his jeans back on and rifling through his duffel for god knows what. “Where's the gun?"

"The one Elkins had?"

"Yes, the Colt. Where is it?"

"You-  He took it with him back in Salvation. I haven't seen it since."

John swears.

"What's the big deal with the - "

"Dammit! That gun was all we had." John takes a deep breath. "Samuel Colt made that gun back in 1835. Legend says it can kill anything."

"Anything as in 'our kind' of anything?"

"Yeah. Demon's got it stashed somewhere in Salvation, or handed it off to an underling or something. _Shit_. But I've gotta find Sam first."  John pauses.  "You still with me?"

Dean swallows. Everything that’s happened since he’d first met John has been a rollercoaster ride of fucked up, but if he’s honest with himself - completely honest - his life has been fucked for a whole lot longer than that.

" _Christo_ ," he says.

John meets his eyes, rock steady, and doesn't flinch.

"Yeah, I'm with you."

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t find Sam in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Or back in Lawrence, or out in Guthrie, Oklahoma. They crisscross the country, picking up cases on the side when Ellen or Bobby call one in, but they never stop looking for Sam.

“It’s probably good though, means he’s gone to ground or something, right?” Dean tries.

“Or the demon’s got him and he’s breathing through a straw.”

And yeah, that’s a possibility. But every sign points to Sam traveling around by himself, covering his tracks like a pro, like John would’ve taught him to. But he’s still hunting from the looks of it, and even the best hunters leave a little mess behind them in the form of shell-shocked witnesses and burned bodies.

Dean leans back in his chair, the conversation not distracting him the way he’d hoped. It’s not like it really hurts, it’s just not particularly comfortable being jabbed with a needle a thousand times a second.

John takes it with a clenched jaw and no other outward sign of discomfort. Dean hates him a little bit for it. That level of sheer bull-headed masochism can’t be healthy.

When it’s done the tattoo artist rubs gel over it and tapes down some gauze. Dean is gifted with his very own tube of something that is probably not recommended for use as a sexual lubricant and a pamphlet of aftercare tips.  He flips through it idly while John settles up the bill; half in cash before and half after, plus a healthy tip tacked on for not asking too many questions.

They slip out the back and hoof it back to the car. John grabs the flask from under the driver’s seat and tips it Dean’s way. Dean takes a healthy gulp, almost pleased, until he realizes it’s cut with holy water.

“Really?”

“Just making sure,” John says without apology. He takes a healthy swig of his own, eyes locked on Dean’s as he swallows. They both know what it means; precautions they should’ve taken a long time ago.

They find a motel for the night and Dean resists the urge to poke at the tender skin just under his collarbone for all of thirty minutes before he’s in the bathroom, peeling back the gauze.

The skin is still red, but the stark black ink of the devil’s trap stands out anyway.  Dean washes his hands and spreads a little more of the stuff from the tube on it. John watches him over his shoulder from a few feet away.

“Hey,” Dean says. “What happens if I get a cut?”

“Don’t get cut.”

“Yeah but what if - ”

“Dean? Let’s not find out.”

“Right.”

John’s expression is twisted up in a constant scowl these days, and none of Dean’s well-intentioned teasing has any effect. Because they don’t find Sam in Rivergrove, Oregon, and the Doc they talk to out in Sidewinder swears Sam was dying from some kind of demon plague before he disappeared without a goddamn trace.

Then Pete Vesnik turns up dead, and Steve Wandell goes MIA. Another hunter, Gordon Walker, thinks Sam is some kind of psychopath that needs to be put down and Dean can actually see John restraining himself from killing the man in cold blood. Gordon talks about taking Sam out like he’s not talking to the kid’s _father_ , which is a pretty stupid move.

But they both hesitate. Because Gordon is a hunter, and a damn good one - usually. But more than that, more than anything else, is the whisper of a question neither one of them will ask, eating at the back of their minds.

_What if he’s right?_

 

* * *

 

 

Turns out, Gordon is right - or half-right, anyway. Whatever is riding Sam’s body kills Vesnik and Wandell, and tries to kill Bobby too. Too bad for the black-eyed sonuvabitch Bobby’s too quick for that.

Dean doesn’t find that out until later, though. Much later.

Not ‘til after Cold Oak, and Nimmi, Ava, and Max.  Not until after he’d found Sam in the rubble of a collapsed building, eyes open wide and lifeless. Not until after the demon had come to him.

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t fall for parlour tricks, kiddo.”

Impossibly bright yellow eyes flick down to the ground and then back up. Busted. He’d covered the devil’s trap with leaves and dirt, fast as he could without knowing how much time he’d have.

“Here’s the thing. I like you, I really do, so you get one more chance. You also get this.” It holds out an old antique gun. “The Colt John’s been wetting his panties over. Rumor has it this thing can actually kill me,” it says, looking over the gun and with disinterest like it’s talking about the weather.

Dean takes the gun, points and shoots without really bothering to hope. The empty chamber clicks over and the demon grins.

“I’m shocked. So shocked that I took the precaution of sending the bullets on ahead of you.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

“What that means is you need the bullets to open the door, but I’m not enough of an idiot to give them to you just like that. And to be honest I haven’t really been too impressed with your performance so far. I had high hopes for Ava, but she and Sammy both struck out too quickly, big upset there. Max was a pleasant surprise.

“You? You I’m still wondering about.” It shrugs. “Max will meet you at the gate. You two play nice and open the door, and what happens next is entirely up to you.”

“Yeah, and what’s in it for me?”

“I’ll let you live.”

“I think we both know I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

“Tough customer. Alright then, I’ll… bring your parents back.”

Yeah right, Dean thinks. He’s hunted down necromancers before, seen more than enough seriously dark shit to last a lifetime. “Zombie mom and dad? I’ll take a pass on that one.”

The demon’s mouth curls down in disgust, eyes hard and threatening. “You know, I could always just kill you and use Max instead.”

“Yeah? Then why haven’t you?”

It doesn’t answer, and Dean relaxes a fraction. “I thought so. See when we found Max he was in a heavy duty looney-bin lock up. I’m thinking you can’t exactly rely on him. You want me. More than that, I think you _need_ me. So I’ll ask you again - what do I get out of it?”

Dean thinks he can hear his own heartbeat in the silence that follows.

When it talks, each word is clipped and hard. “What do you want?”

“Flip the switch.”

“Excuse me?”

“What Ava was talking about. There’s power there, right? So, do your thing. Power me up.”

“Ah, it doesn’t work quite like that.”

“So? Make it work _like that_. You’re supposed to be such a badass, but you’re telling me you can’t?”

“Flipping the switch, as you call it, requires a certain... openness to influence.” The demon glances down at Dean’s chest. Or, at the tattoo on Dean’s chest, hidden underneath his shirt. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t some low-level schmuck to get tricked into a devil’s trap. Figures it could somehow sense the mark, even covered as it was.

“Oh right, let me just break the trap so you can waltz right in. You think I’m that stupid?”

“I think I know you better than you know yourself. Come on, Dean, you know I can’t possess anyone unless there’s some crack in the armor already. Besides, I don’t need to possess you - not once you understand the power you’ve been given, what you can really do.”

And it’s stupid - it’s phenomenally stupid, no matter what front Dean is trying to put up for Yellow Eyes. But Sam is dead and John isn’t here, and even if he was Dean doesn’t think there’d be a popsicle's chance in hell that he’d be in any state to do what had to be done. Not with Sam gone.

Dean slides his knife from its sheath, tugs down his shirt, and cuts a clean line straight across the trap. Yellow Eyes watches in silence, his eyes almost looking - _hungry_.

Dean barely feels the cut. Blood is rushing in his ears, heart pounding with adrenaline he’s doing his level best to hide. His hand falls to his side, dropping the knife in the dirt.

The demon steps forward and lays two fingers on his temple and pain splits through Dean’s head as he falls to the ground.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s night when he wakes up, but it doesn’t _look_ like night. Dean can see every leaf in the trees around him, a riot of color blocking out the sky above.  The demon is gone. He doesn’t need to look around to know; he can feel it.

His head is pounding and his nose is bleeding. He wipes up the blood with the heel of his hand and flinches - his hands feel like they’re burning, something like electric shocks jumping along the skin. He stares down at them. They look normal.

 _Flip the switch_ , he’d told Yellow Eyes.

And Yellow Eyes had done it, flipped them all on at once. Dean looks up the road, somewhere fifty miles in that direction is the graveyard and Max, and whatever the hell Dean had just agreed to let loose. He’s nervous as hell, but not actually scared.

There’s a spicy tang in the back of his throat as he crosses the railroad tracks, the sensation like a sting without actually hurting. Yellow Eyes can think what he wants - that the power will make Dean malleable, that the taste of it will send him spiraling back for more. That without John standing with him as a bulwark, Dean will do as he’s told. But Yellow Eyes doesn’t know him nearly as well as he thinks. Dean has fire running through his veins, he has the Colt, and soon enough he’ll have the bullets too.

Bullets that can kill Yellow Eyes.

 _Maybe_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy New Year! Because clearly when I said 'chapter 2 will be posted next week' I meant 'lol next year, what?'
> 
> The next fic in the series is tentatively titled _Shadowland_ and it jumps ahead a bit in the timeline. I'm not going to set myself up for failure by setting a date for it to be posted, but it is already written and just needs some tweaking and a few more editing passes before it's fit for public consumption.
> 
> I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading!


End file.
